


Agent Phil Coulson: Picking Up Strays

by generalzero



Series: A Universe that Almost Existed [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Anti-Hero, Character Development, Character Study, Ethics, Found Family, Gen, Happy Ending, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, Light Angst, Moral Ambiguity, Moral Dilemmas, Morally Ambiguous Character, Personal Reflection, Queer Character, Queer Themes, Spies & Secret Agents, itty-bitty chapters, phil has a bit of a mid-life crisis here folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-18 11:35:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21610246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/generalzero/pseuds/generalzero
Summary: …in which Phillip Jones-Coulson may not believe in heroes anymore, but he still believes in humanity. Also, he keeps picking up strays.
Series: A Universe that Almost Existed [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/289019
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. Phillip Jones-Coulson, age 10

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I couldn't bear to make Coulson a villain, so I made him as close to anti-hero as I could get.
> 
> Please enjoy and leave comments!
> 
> Content Warning: referenced racism, referenced homophobia. Heed the tags.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own anything that Marvel came up with first and they have more money than god so there’s no point suing me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> grammatical edits 12/08/2019

Phillip Jones-Coulson, age ten, has six Hot-wheels cars, one toy truck, fourteen Nancy Drew books, one GI Jane, one Captain America action figure, one Walkman, two Chuck Berry albums, one old blind beagle named Malcolm X, one three-legged kitten named Marsha P. Johnson, and one part-time squirrel who comes by in the spring to eat the banana nut muffins Phil leaves on his windowsill named George Washington Carver ("Cuz he invented peanuts, Dad. Squirrels like nuts. Get it?"). Dad says George Washington Carver didn't invent peanuts, he discovered new things to do with them, and Pop says Phil can call the squirrel anything he wants as long as he doesn't pick up any more strays.

Phillip Jones Coulson likes counting things and sorting them by color or name or whatever else he feels like sorting by that day. He likes to help Pop put on his makeup and Dad check his students' papers. He talks a lot to Marsha, Malcolm and George and not so much to other kids. He's curious and precocious and—right now—he believes in heroes.


	2. Phillip Jones-Coulson, age 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> grammatical edits 12/08/2019

Phillip Jones-Coulson, age fourteen, has one Hot-wheels Chevrolet corvette, twelve grown-up mystery books, one Captain America action figure, one Walkman, six black jazz albums, and one new black suit for wearing to funerals. Malcolm X and Marsha P. Johnson are going to live with Dad's cousin Alice. George Washington Carver will be staying at the house, but Phil won't be there to feed him banana nut muffins anymore.  
  
Phil has never met the rest of the Coulsons, and they don't want to meet him now. Dad's cousin Alice would take him, but according to the State of New Jersey, Phil isn't related to cousin Alice or any of the Joneses. She says she's going to apply to adopt him, but they both know it's a long shot. The Joneses are black, and Phil is not. 

This is not how things were supposed to go. His parents weren't supposed to be dead. He wasn't supposed to be going to live with a family of strangers because Dad and Pop were not and could not ever be married like everyone else's parents were. He wasn't supposed to live in a world where the social worker tried harder to find his "mom" than she did to find a loophole that would let cousin Alice take him home. Someone was supposed to have stepped in—a police officer, a bystander, anyone. Anyone could have stepped in at that moment and made themselves Phillip Jones-Coulson's lifelong hero.

But they didn't.


	3. Phillip Jones-Coulson, age 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> grammatical edits 12/08/2019

Phillip Jones-Coulson, age eighteen, has one Hot-wheels Chevrolet corvette, one Captain America action figure, and a brand new set of army fatigues. He enlisted in the military immediately upon aging out of the foster system. No one adopts a fourteen year old, especially not one with a psych file that says he's "slow" and "possibly homosexual" and has "obedience issues". The US is invading Panama and recruitment quotas are high: it's easy to get the psych profile swept under the rug, especially when he blows "slow" out of the water with record breaking aptitude scores.

Phil has spent four years in one system hoping for a hero, and now he's signing up for six years in another one—but this time, Phil is gonna be the hero. He's clever and patient despite the chip on his shoulder and he's willing to work the system—however broken it is—for a chance to do some good. Be the change you want to see in the world, they say.


	4. Phillip Jones-Coulson, age 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> grammatical edits 12/08/2019

Phillip Jones-Coulson, age twenty-six, has one Hot-wheels Chevrolet corvette, one Captain America action figure, twelve new scars, seven out of a sixty-two piece set of vintage Captain America trading cards (near mint, one owner from new)—and so sooo many non-disclosure forms to sign. Honestly, these folks make Army Intelligence look like a bunch of easy-going amateurs. They should really find a shorter name, though.

In eight years of active duty in some of the most hellish places on Earth, Phil has seen a lot of heroes, and a lot of martyrs. He has reluctantly come to the conclusion that membership in the former category inevitably buys you a membership in the latter. Furthermore, it's slowly becoming apparent that sometimes heroic people are not as useful as people who are willing to lie and kill and make unpopular choices.

Phil has a worrying suspicion he's becoming one of the latter type.


	5. Phillip Jones-Coulson, age 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content edits 12/08/2019  
> grammatical edits 12/08/2019

Phillip Jones-Coulson, age thirty-one, has one Hot-wheels Chevrolet corvette, a favorite taser, forty-nine out of a sixty-two piece set of vintage Captain America trading cards, and something that is frustratingly hard to quantify with a very handsome cellist he met on a dating site. Mostly it’s frustrating because Phil is coming to realize just how much of his life is walled up behind confidential files and non-disclosure agreements. It’s not just that he can’t talk about work. It’s that lying and manipulation come so easily to Phil at this point that he has to make a conscious effort to be sincere, to stop himself from researching everything about someone before he allows himself the option of connecting with them, to just let relationships grow naturally.

Finally Phil has to stop and evaluate his life, and himself. He takes an extended leave and spends the time in coffee shops and other places where he can observe normal people. He tries and fails to identify the moment where he stopped being a normal person. He considers tracking down Cousin Alice. He decides to break up with the cellist three times, and changes his mind at the last minute each time.

Phil has no illusions anymore about being some kind of hero. He chose the slippery slope, writing off the dents and chips in his integrity as a necessary evil endured for the chance to accomplish meaningful change, to make the world a slightly better place. Somewhere along the line Phil lost track of how far he was slipping—somewhere along the line he lost track of his goal to be someone Captain America would be proud of. At this point Phil is certain he won’t ever be. But Phil still wants to do something good, even if he’s not necessarily a good person.


	6. Phillip Jones-Coulson, age 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stylistic edits 12/08/2019  
> grammatical edits 12/08/2019

Phillip Jones-Coulson, age thirty-six, has one 1962 Chevrolet Corvette named Lola, a favorite taser, one complete set of vintage Captain America trading cards, a long-distance relationship with the cellist, and four different bland expressions that will each make even veteran agents tremble and resolve to file their reports properly next time. He's good at his job and even better at making others good at their jobs. He's also got an idea, a sort of side project he's calling the Avenger's Initiative because Clint said the Hero's Initiative was too tacky. Fury says he can call it whatever he damn well pleases as long as he stops picking up strays.

Phil’s strays are an eclectic bunch, and taking care of them is not always easy. His two former assassins require frequent, explicit proof they haven’t traded in their old employers for a new one whose only difference is government funding. His displaced super spy needs both material resources and social support to keep him from slipping out of the new millennium and back into the forties. Phil’s been working for quite awhile with army general to rehabilitate a man with two faces: one belongs to a large green beast who begs Phil and Gen. Ross never to let him out of his cell, and the other to a psychopathic genius who’s nearly escaped four times. Then there’s the team of four techno-vigilantes working under the cover of Advanced Idea Mechanics to constantly piss off the US military and its weapons contractors—and sometimes SHIELD, despite the number of times Phil has pulled political strings to keep them out of a treason charge. Phil’s most recent acquisition is an annoying alien whom Phil nevertheless persuades to take on as many contract-jobs with SHIELD as possible, because at the very least if the alien’s on the helicarrier Phil can kind of hope he’s not plotting another “harmless” bit of mischief.

Phillip Jones-Coulson likes counting things and sorting them by importance, urgency, usefulness, or whatever else it seems prudent to sort them by in order to do his job. He talks a lot to Natasha, Clint and Maria and not so much to Fury. He's cool, unflappable, and he knows his people well. Especially the strays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm not actually a huge Coulson geek, but I did appreciate the way he was woven neatly through all the Phase One films. I make no promises either way about whether he'll survive the Avengers remix, but that's a long ways away anyway. Also, this is your peek at the roster for the Avengers in a Universe that Almost Existed.


End file.
